Neal doesn't stay with August. He can't. It's suffocating there, wading through the morass of August's guilt and hopelessness in that tiny trailer. Neal carries enough of his own regrets; he can't deal with August's too. So after only a couple hours during which he finds out that August knows little more than he's already said, Neal heads back out in the direction of town. Regretfully, he leaves his bag behind with August. Trusting the guy with what he cares about hasn't turned out too well for him in the past, but there's nothing in the bag he'll really miss, and Neal doesn't want anyone to immediately peg him as an outsider.
Walking through the streets makes him feel like he's found his way into a refugee camp. Everywhere, there are people crying, calling out for loved ones, exclaiming over newfound family, exchanging stories, speaking over one another, voices overlapping. There are even plenty of people with their belongings out everywhere, some of them apparently packing up to head out of town before they can be destroyed by the villains who've brought magic back, others moving from one house to another—from one fake family to a rediscovered real one.
Neal's been in multiple worlds, and every time there is a steep learning curve that he's figured out how to offset through aggressive observation, but everything he sees here cuts too deeply.
These people remember their old lives. But they've been living different lives completely. They remember loving someone, but now they realize they don't really love them, that it was all a curse and that there's someone else they chose to love, once upon a time. (Like Emma? Did she only love him because she was sent to this land in preparation of becoming a savior? Even if he hadn't let her go, would she have realized that he isn't good for her? That he's not who she wants? That he can never be enough?)
It's a mess, and Neal feels himself getting smaller and more hunched, his hands clenched in his pockets, as he tries to avoid attention. Not that it works too well. Every couple blocks, someone new grabs him by the shoulder and turns him, their eyes desperate, their mouths downturned, their voices cracking.
Phillip? Eric? Milo? Flynn?
Regardless of the name, the person is always disappointed as Neal can only stare back, shaking his head and backing away.
He shouldn't be here (he should have remembered his lessons from Neverland rather than those from the Darlings). This grief, this pain, is private. It's not his.
But he is responsible for it.
None of these people would be here if it weren't for him. Him and a bean. (His father and a dagger.)
All along, no matter how maudlin he gets, Neal keeps a sharp eye out for any sign of his father. And he's not the only one. Beneath the emotional cries, there are sharp whispers, muttered asides, and people's eyes rove ceaselessly, always on the lookout for two people.
The Evil Queen. Apparently the mayor of this place, somehow or other (and maybe the one who cast the curse? but that doesn't make sense when Neal knows it's Rumplestiltskin who brought them all here).
And Rumplestiltskin. Not that they use his name. No, it seems in the centuries since Bae left him, his papa has turned into some kind of legend, like a monster in the dark.
The Dark One, they call him. The Deal-Maker. The Spinner. The beast. Mr. Gold.
(Neal snorts, the first time he hears Deal-Maker, and wonders if his father's grown any better at honoring his deals since Baelfire knew him.)
As much as he's reluctant to see Rumplestiltskin, there's someone else Neal is half-hoping to see (and half-terrified to come into contact with; she'll hate him, there's no question about that).
Fortunately, he sees her long before she can see him.
It's her golden hair that gives her away, that and her red jacket, bright in the foggy morning. Her hair is curled into long ringlets now, and it makes her look just as much like a princess as she apparently really is.
And she's not alone.
Outside of what looks like some kind of diner, she stands with two other people. A man, tall and as blond as Emma, looking at her as if afraid even his eyes on her will make her crack into a thousand pieces. And a woman, hair as black as night, lips as red as blood, skin as white as snow.
Yeah, he thinks. I've read this one.
Emma looks distressed (he knows that she's never more uncomfortable than when backed into an emotional corner). She looks trapped (like any good lost kid, she's always thought that anything too good to be true must be a trick). She looks tired and harried and not altogether happy (but she's needed, she has a place here, there are people looking to her, and Neal knows that all she's ever wanted is a place to belong—and she deserves that, even if it was never going to be Tallahassee with him).
Just before he turns away, Neal sees Emma smile at someone just out of Neal's view. It's a wide smile, a radiant smile (the smile she gave him when she pointed at a map and he dared to dream of a future).
Without waiting to see who makes her smile like that now, Neal runs. It's not his proudest moment, but at least he's good at it.
With the streets so crowded, it shouldn't come as a surprise to him that he almost immediately runs directly into someone, but at least she's nice about it.
"You all right?" the young woman asks. She's tall and dark-haired with a streak of red hidden in the waves of brunette, and her hands help steady him. "Were you looking for someone? I can help you get signed up in the register in case they're looking for you too."
"No, I…I'm not…" Neal dares a look over his shoulder and realizes that he somehow did manage to turn a corner between him and Emma.
He ran. And now he's hiding.
(Like a coward.)
Why did he even come if he's not planning on facing Emma?
"Yeah," he says with overblown confidence. He even aims for a smile. "You know what? I should get my name down. You never know who might be here."
"Of course. This way, Dr. Hopper's got a table set up." The woman smiles at him as she leads him unerringly through the milling crowd. "My name's Ruby," she said. "I don't think I've seen you before. You live on the other side of town?"
"By the docks," he says vaguely (half this town looks like it's by the docks). "I'm Neal Cassidy."
She doesn't question the lack of another name, and Neal tries not to feel too relieved.
It doesn't take more than a minute to be introduced to Dr. Archie Hopper, a nice man who's trying not to look overwhelmed, and to write his name down on the list of others. Everyone else, he sees, has written both their Storybrooke name and their old-world name, as well as a phone number to reach them at.
Neal fills out everything but the second name.
Emma doesn't know his old name (the only one who does is the one person Neal doesn't want finding him).
With a smile to Archie, Neal gives the list back.
"You need to look through for anyone?" the man asks him. "We don't have anywhere near a comprehensive list yet, but your loved ones might have already been by."
"They haven't been," Neal says. "Thanks."
The doctor's eyes sharpen, and Neal decides it's a good time to fade back into the crowd. Though that crowd, he realizes too slow, is starting to sound a bit more like a mob than he's comfortable with.
Neal's almost surprised when he feels a flash of fear—not for himself, but for someone who doesn't deserve it.
The Dark One can take care of himself, Neal Cassidy reminds the little boy apparently still hiding inside him. Besides, this mob doesn't look violent. It looks scared. If anything, he thinks they're more likely to run than to attack.
Either way, he doesn't want to be stuck in the middle of it.
Blending to the edges of the crowd, Neal starts turning down quieter and quieter streets until he ends up on one that looks almost completely deserted. There's only one sign of life he can see—a woman turning the sign in her shop window from Closed to Open. Neal checks the watch he's never without (10 AM, still early-ish, and Emma's tired, and he needs a reprieve) and then heads forward.
It's a bookstore, he realizes. Once Upon A Book.
Cute, he thinks with a flash of cynical irony as he pulls the door open and steps inside.
The woman he saw earlier looks up, her expression all astonishment before she smooths it away into a polite smile. "Hello," she says. Her voice lilts with what sounds like an Australian accent, and Neal can't help but try to think of fairytales set Down Under. "How are you doing?"
"Been better," he replies, thinking of the crowd in the center of town and the Dark One who still thinks he can be a father lurking somewhere close by—and the woman he both longs and dreads to see.
Her smile turns sympathetic. "I understand," she says. "Did you just need a quiet place? Or were you looking for something in particular?"
"Frankly, I'm a little tired of fairytales," he says wryly, and the woman laughs.
"That's all right. There's a couch over there if you just want to sit for a while, but feel free to read any of the books. I don't mind."
"You sure this is a store instead of a library?"
"A library might get more use," she admits. She looks about his age (so…actually, several centuries younger), and is pretty in a striking way, but she's tiny, and Neal doesn't often get the chance to feel quite so tall as she crosses in front of him to plump a few pillows on the couch in a cozy seating area. It looks inviting, and Neal doesn't hesitate too long before he takes a seat.
"Thanks," he says.
"I'm Belle," she says with the suggestion of a curtsy. Then, unexpectedly, she blushes and laughs at herself. "Sorry. The memories are a little fresh, I guess. I haven't introduced myself that way in…well, I guess almost three decades."
"Yeah." Neal's throat feels dry. (Your fault, a dark voice that sounds a lot like Pan whispers in his head.) "Well, it's nice to meet you, Belle."
He really hopes she's not the only Belle he can think of in fairytales.
(Though…dark-haired, kind, surrounded by books…the odds are against him.)
"I'm Neal," he offers a beat later. "That's…the only person I want to be now."
"Of course." Her eyes turn sad as she looks away from him, out the window to the empty street, though he imagines she's seeing something completely different. "It is our choice who we are in the end, isn't it?"
Neal frowns a bit.
Belle gives her head a short shake and smiles at him. "Sorry. I was up late last night with my husband and then early again this morning, so I didn't get much sleep. Just ignore me."
"Actually…maybe you could recommend a book? I don't have a lot of money, but in exchange for giving me a quiet place to sit and a sneak peek, I could talk about the story with you? We can make our own improvements."
That's what he and Papa used to do. Not with books—those were far too expensive for them—but Papa would spend his market days listening for snippets of stories and then he'd combine them into some epic tale for his son, and together, they'd talk the story over while Papa would pretend that Bae's overexcited interjections were inspiring.
Something burns at the back of his eyes.
(How long has it been since Neal last remembered something as innocent as that about his old life?)
"I'd love that!" Belle says excitedly. "My husband and I started doing that a couple months ago and it's so fun! And so illuminating to learn what another person notices about a story!"
Neal's tempted to ask her if her husband's really the Beast and if he has fur now that magic's come, but she hasn't asked after his story, so he keeps the irreverent question to himself. Still, she's smiling back at him, waiting, expectant, so he finds himself admitting, "My father and I used to do the same thing."
A flash of pain drains her smile of its brightness before she sets aside whatever thought just occurred to her. "Well then, I'd be honored to share the tradition with you. Let me just think of a really good book."
"Not a fairytale," he reminds her, keeping his tone teasing.
"No," she says, her smile once more dimming as she worries at the wedding ring on her left hand. "Not a fairytale."
Neal takes the book she eventually hands him and cracks it open, but he makes sure he sits where he can see through the display window to the street outside.
If Emma comes this way…he'll be brave (he'll be, finally, what she deserves him to be).
But if it's Rumplestiltskin that comes…he'll run (like father, like son, after all).
Belle gives up on focusing on the pages in front of her and grabs a dustcloth before heading back into the more shadowed corners of her store. She doesn't want to disturb Neal, reading with every indication of interest at the front, but more, she just needs a chance to breathe. There's a band around her chest, tightening more with each inhale, so that she doesn't think she's been able to fill her lungs since her visit with her father.
"Belle, you're free!" her papa had cried, when she stepped into his flower shop. He'd hugged her, and for just that brief moment, Belle had thought everything would be fine. Safe in his arms, she'd been able to set aside that day of terror when he'd slammed into her with a mask over his head and left her bleeding and unconscious on the floor. Instead, smelling the flowers and the soil on him, Belle had remembered another world, when he was her only family, when she'd thought him lost forever, when they'd exchanged sporadic letters in lieu of being able to travel back to each other.
Tears sting her eyes, and Belle slips into the bathroom to wet her dustcloth (as if it's the dust making her want to cry). The sight of her own face in the mirror stills her.
She looks like Isabel Gold. And that's who her father saw, too, when he stepped away from her, when she tried to tell him about Rumplestiltskin. His face had been twisted in horror, his eyes shadowed with disappointment she's never seen him direct her way before.
"You're staying with him? How can you choose him?" he asked, as aghast as if she'd said she was planning to become a murderer rather than just that she meant to stay with her husband, and what was Belle supposed to say to that? (Why did it have to be either-or at all?)
"I'm married to him," she said. It was too little, and even now, Belle wishes she'd said a hundred other things (like the fact that her husband would never hurt her, that he's the one who stayed up with her, who calmed her from her nightmares while recovering from the concussion her father gave her; that he gives her flowers every week simply because of a single comment she made). But at the same time, it was apparently too much (Maurice, like everyone else in this town, is all too ready to take a person at face value, as if everything can so easily be divided between black and white).
"You're still cursed!" her father had said, judgment and condemnation and verdict all in one.
Belle turns away from her wan reflection and goes back out to run the cloth over the bookcases her husband designed for her. Rumplestiltskin, the Dark One, designed them for her, and gave them to her as a gift. Free of charge. Simply because he wanted to. He had nothing to gain from it—indeed, he almost lost her when she reacted badly to them. There was no hidden fee, no price he tacked on at the end, no trick.
"He's not who the stories make him out to be," Belle had tried to tell Maurice.
But he hadn't listened. After she'd refused to agree to leave Rumplestiltskin, after she'd yanked herself free of her father's suddenly bruising grip, he hadn't heard a single word she said.
"You're not my daughter," he'd told her as he pointed her to the door, his face turned away. "Not like this. Not when you're still cursed."
But she isn't. She isn't. Loving Rumplestiltskin is not a curse.
Although…it might be a bit more pressure than she'd anticipated.
"You have no idea what that monster has done to me—to countless innocents!" Her papa's words still ring in her ears, even nearly a full day later.
"You okay?"
Belle startles and looks up from her apparently frozen stare at honey-gold wood to meet the dark blue eyes of her newest patron. Not quite a customer, perhaps, but a visitor to her store nonetheless, with a kind smile and an endearing self-effacement to his quiet presence.
"I'm…I'm fine."
"You sure?" Neal holds his hands up. "I'll stop bothering you if you want, but…sometimes a stranger can be a good listener. No judgment, right?"
Despite herself, she snorts. "I doubt that."
(Everyone has an opinion on her husband, after all, whether they have a right to or not.)
"It's not like I have any emotional stake in the matter," he says with a crooked grin. "But if you need some quiet, I can head out. I know I'm taking up your—"
"No!" Belle steps forward, the dustcloth falling from her hands. "Please. You don't have to. It's nice to have someone here. It happens so rarely."
"Really?" If he hadn't already been sweet enough to earn her goodwill, the surprise he shows at this would have won her over instantly. "But it's so comfy in here. I can tell you really love the place."
"I do." Belle smiles and strokes her hand over the nearest shelf. "But it's not just me. My husband helped with it. He designed these bookcases, you know, after the earthquake."
Neal smiles and nods politely. "They're great."
"He did it just for me, to make me happy," she murmurs, and then before she can stop them, there are tears spilling from her eyes.
"Oh, hey, whoa, I didn't…" Neal's hands flutter at the edges of her vision as he rocks awkwardly on his feet, half toward her, half away. "Here, you want to sit down? Can I get you something?"
"I'm sorry," she tries, but his hand, so light on her elbow, guides her up to the couch where he sits her down and then settles himself several inches away. She wants to giggle at the way he pats her shoulder so tentatively, but then she remembers the way Rumplestiltskin squeezed that same shoulder when he woke this morning (as if to check that she wasn't just a dream; as if to make absolutely certain she was still there, his eyes so wide and dark with pain he couldn't put into words) and more tears burn wet tracks down her cheeks.
"It's okay," Neal offers with another stilted pat. "I mean…maybe it isn't yet, but it'll get there."
"My husband," she says as she uses the edge of her sleeve to wipe her eyes. (It was here, at their feet, where she and Rumplestiltskin shared their first kiss. Where he looked at her and asked her who she was. Where he warned her she didn't truly know him.) "He…he wasn't my husband before. In our old world. Just here."
"Oh."
"But I love him," Belle says. She looks up, right into the eyes of this kind stranger. In that moment (maybe because she needs reassurance so badly), she thinks they look familiar. Dark at first glance, lighter than expected at a second, surrounded in the beginnings of laugh lines too gentle to be called crow's feet. "I love him and I want him to be my husband, but my father…he said…"
Neal's hand falls a bit more warmly on her back, just below her shoulder. "You love him, this husband of yours?" he says. "Then forget what anyone else says. Don't let anyone talk you into leaving someone you really love, okay? That's…it's not worth it. If you love someone, you should be with them. No matter what." He lets out a mirthless laugh. "Fathers aren't always right."
"No." Belle straightens, her tears drying as she finds an inner well of determination. "They're not."
Her father might have given up on her (might have turned his back on her without ever even trying to apologize for what he did to her under the curse, without even attempting to understand), but Rumplestiltskin is a father too—and he knows to hold on. To never give up. To keep loving and fighting even though there are realms and centuries and impossibilities between.
Monster or not, he deserves for someone to do the same for him.
"You're right," she tells Neal. "I do love him—and I'm not going to let anyone stop me from giving him a chance."
(No matter how hard it is? She's not sure, but she thinks…she thinks she is up for the challenge.)
The stranger's smile is crooked and small, but so sincere that Belle's heart twists (in recognition? in appreciation? Whichever, it's a strange feeling, and she shakes it off).
"Thank you," she says impulsively. "This can't be what you expected to have to deal with, but—"
"It's a strange situation." He waves his hand flippantly. "Trust me, I was on the edge of a breakdown myself when I stumbled in here."
"Still…"
"Hey, I was thinking of going and getting some coffee. That's why I came back to find you. I wondered if you wanted some?"
Only then does Belle realize that it's nearly noon and that she must have lost half the morning pretending to dust while trying not to cry.
"No," she says. "Thank you, but I think I'm going to go have lunch with my husband. If you still need a place to hide, I'll be open again in an hour."
Neal laughs and says, "Oh, don't worry, I'll be back. This is the quietest place in town."
Belle finds a bookmark for him and assures him that it's fine to leave his book on the arm of the couch until his next visit, then waves him off. It's nice, not being alone here all day, but she feels a sudden, overpowering urge to seek out Rumplestiltskin. (To remind herself that he is not everything her father accused him of being. He's more. He's…he's hers.)
Granny's is open, and Belle thinks of going inside, of seeing everyone gathered there. And she imagines all of them turning to look at her with that same horrified, distrustful expression as her father wore. Decisively, she turns away and walks home to put together some sandwiches and sides. Thus armed, she heads to her husband's pawnshop.
The night before, waiting for him to come to tea, shaking and trying to hold back her tears lest he arrive and find her a mess, Belle had imagined a hundred different ways they might interact now that their pasts are openly spilled out between them (but they aren't, are they, not with the centuries of past caught up behind his prickly walls; not with her own painful experiences too shallowly buried). Her thoughts had been so bound up in pain and disappointment and anger that, truthfully, she hadn't even noticed he was late for tea until the clock struck the hour and she realized it was past her bedtime.
For all her imaginings, though, she had never thought that Rumplestiltskin would come in, late and limping so heavily she'd nearly lunged from the bed to try to help him cross the bedroom, and stare at her as if she were his only salvation.
In that moment, with her (cursed) name on his lips, with that pain scribed all across his face, every single one of her father's accusations had vanished from her mind. Opening her arms to him, letting him crawl up the bed and into her, his tears like liquid heat against her throat, she'd only known that it felt right to cradle him against her chest and let her hair fall to blanket them away from the rest of the world.
She hadn't let go of him, not for a second, not when her arms fell asleep, not when his sobs finally dwindled into nothing…not when he told her that it's impossible for them to leave town without losing themselves.
(No fleeing from the inevitable backlash of a waking town. No setting her father in the past and putting off any thoughts of reconciliation for another day. No keeping Rumplestiltskin to herself where it's so much easier to see him as her sweetheart rather than the Dark One.)
Belle slips inside the pawnshop with her hastily packed lunch and hears the bell ring overhead. "Sweetheart?" she calls before catching himself. "Rumplestiltskin," she adds, and the curtain twitches aside to reveal her husband staring at her as if he didn't see her just a few hours earlier.
"Hey," he says.
Her smile widens all on its own. "Hey. I brought lunch."
He blinks at her, all surprise and disbelief and wonder that makes something pull tight low in her belly. "You didn't have to do that."
"I wanted to," she says (she has a feeling she will repeat this sentiment for him roughly as many times as she breathes).
"Thank you," he says, and holds the curtain up in invitation for her to precede him into the backroom.
They're quiet as they work together to set out the lunch on his worktable. Belle smiles into her sandwich when he goes straight for the pickle slices she added on a whim, and he pretends not to see when she swipes mayonnaise from her cheek. There is a strange contradiction between them in that she is utterly comfortable in the quiet with him, but also on edge, as if she thinks she should be saying something. Not that she knows what she'd say anyway.
At a casual glance, she'd never be able to tell that Rumplestiltskin was a mess the night before. That he clung so tightly to her even this morning, his voice low and broken as he told her he wouldn't stop trying to find a way past whatever barrier has sprung up between town and this Land Without Magic. (That he leaned into the kiss she placed on his cheek as farewell, and that when she'd glanced back at him, he was holding his hand against his cheek, against her kiss, as if to brand it there forever.)
But Isabel knows her husband, and she can spot the tightness around the edges of his eyes. The crimps along his mouth. The too-steady movements of his hands.
(He is so fragile, here, and she cannot help but wonder if he was in their old world too, only no one knew it then.)
"I had a customer in the shop this morning," she says when it seems they might actually finish their entire meal without speaking a single word. "He said he'll come back even. He's nice. Maybe he'll bring others with him."
Rumplestiltskin's smile is tiny but genuine. "I'm glad. You deserve to not be alone."
"I'm not alone," she says, and reaches across to lay her hand over his. "I have you."
As always, his eyes lock onto the proof of physical touch between them. Belle's heart warms at it even as her father's words ring in her ears.
He beat me nearly to death, Belle! Did he ever tell you that? Look, look at what the beast did to me!
Belle's hand falls away from his (she thinks of the first night Rumplestiltskin must have remembered, when he came home late; she remembers the blood on his scraped knuckles). Her appetite flees (she can see, too clearly, the scars her father showed her, on the back of his head, on his arm, on his ribs).
"Are you all right, Belle?" Rumplestiltskin asks.
His voice is low. The accent is familiar. He sounds concerned.
Her husband (the monster).
Belle attempts a smile but it fails nearly immediately as Rumplestiltskin meets her eyes. Something in his expression tightens.
"How was your visit with your father?" he asks.
Beneath the cover of the table, her hands clench into fists in her lap. If she looks up at him…who will she see?
The Dark One, infamous and trailing a river of blood in his wake?
Or her sweet, shy, scared husband, desperate to be reunited with his son?
(She is terrified that it will be neither; that instead, it will be a man caught somewhere between the two—neither too evil to give up on, nor heroic enough to make the rest of their story any easier.)
"Belle?" Rumplestiltskin scoots closer to her. "Are you okay? Did your father hurt you?"
"Like you hurt him?" The words slip from her like caged air, escaping at the slightest opening and poisoned from their long confinement.
Rumplestiltskin is utterly silent, absolutely still, his expression shuttered and close.
"He showed me the scars," she says, and every nerve in her body is screaming at her to stop, but she can't, she can't, she won't be a dupe, won't be an easy target (not again), and so she sounds defiant as she challenges him. "There are so many of them. You beat him nearly to death!"
"He hurt you, Isabel!" her husband snarls, all his vulnerabilities vanished so quickly beneath bristling armor and sharp offense. "I cannot let that stand! I will not let that stand."
"It's Belle," she says coldly, her chin canted up.
And for all his armor, for all the masks he wears, she sees those two little words land like magic-laced poison.
(Isabel, he pleaded for last night, and she answered him without the slightest hesitation, gave him his wife with her every breath. But today…today, in the cold light, it's so much harder to see past her father's scorn and her father's pain and her own fear to be anything but one person.)
Rumplestiltskin draws back from her. The remnants of their lunch lie between them, but one would never know it from the way she stands, her hands clenched into fists at her side, and the way he keeps his cane planted between them, his face so impassive she might almost (almost) think he cares nothing for how quickly this has degenerated.
"And I'm the Dark One, dearie," he says in a low, menacing tone.
She knows it shouldn't matter, not after her own refutation, but hearing him call her that, as if she is nothing to him, hurts.
"No," she says. "No, you're not. In this land, you're just a man who makes wrong choices. Do you…" She swallows, forces herself not to cry, asks, "Do you even want to change?"
"Do you want me to?" he retorts, and only then, in the split second before he looks away, does Belle realize that it is not fury sitting there in his eyes.
It's resignation.
"I want you to be the good man I see inside you," she says. "I want everyone to be able to see past the monster you think is so necessary." She steps forward, wanting to take his hands, wanting to do something to bridge the divide suddenly yawning between them. But Rumplestiltskin matches her step forward with a step backward, and just like in the early days of Emma Swan's arrival (of Rumplestiltskin's awakening), he doesn't meet her eyes, but instead stares at something just beyond her left shoulder. Belle resists the urge to look behind her. She keeps her voice steady as she says, "Can't you at least try?"
"This is who I am, Belle," he says in a voice so quiet she can scarcely hear him. "It's who I've been for centuries."
"If you just tried, you could be more than your magic makes you!" she insists. She can't explain the desperation brewing up inside her (thinks of her father's horror, imagines that look in everyone's eyes, wonders what she will do if the entire town, everyone she likes and admires, turns their back on her), or the fear (she remembers another monster, another time she offered her hand to darkness, and she remembers the blood and the pain and the loneliness as she convalesced without a single visitor) that make her raise her voice and say, "But if you don't try…you'll be left with nothing but a chipped cup and a doomed quest."
And that, she knows even as she says it, is a step too far. (His son is sacred, she thinks, and she has not earned the right, yet, to broach that topic.)
Rumplestiltskin's eyes narrow, his tone all bite and snarl as he says, "That is a lie. You think you know me? You think you can dictate to me? I will find my son, dearie, and there's not one thing you can do to distract me from that. Nothing means more to me than him, certainly not a wife I never even asked for."
Belle's breath catches in her throat, her chest aching with shocking hurt. "And you'll lose him all over again if he only sees a monster!" she cries.
"Like you?" he hisses. This time, it's him who moves forward, a sinuous prowl that has Belle swallowing and wanting to reach out, to touch, to calm, to comfort.
(She feels like two different people—not Belle of Avonlea and Isabel Gold—but the hero she's always longed to be and the woman she's free to become when Rumplestiltskin looks at her as if at a miracle.)
"You're not a monster," she says.
"Just a man who makes wrong choices." He tilts his head, all showmanship and sleight-of-hand and diversion to cover how badly she's hurt him.
And she has. She knows she has. She doesn't even know why, not when she only wanted to help him after his terrible disappointment (when she just wants him to show the town what he shows her), but now that she has come so far, has drawn this line in the sand between them, she doesn't know how to back down. (She won't be a pawn, not again, will never again choose to be the sacrificial offering laid out in the name of 'the greater good.')
"If you think so badly of me," he says, "then why stay at all? Why come back? Just trying to be a hero again?"
Anger blinds her (it never turns out well, only ever makes things worse, but she isn't quick enough to catch it this time). "Maybe I shouldn't have come back!" she snaps. "After all, you just said you never even wanted me."
"Then leave," he retorts. "Isn't that what you promised to do anyway?"
"What?" she starts to ask and then stops.
When you finally see behind the mask to the monster that's really there…don't hate me. Leave, if you have to. Don't look back. Take whatever you want with you. But just…don't hate me.
She did promise. It was her side of the deal. A deal they made only a couple days ago. And already…already she is looking at him the same way everyone else does.
"Leave," Rumplestiltskin says again, his voice dull and flat. "You were only a distraction anyway."
How quickly they have turned on each other.
Belle can't help but think of their day at the cabin, their picnic in front of the fire, the taste of strawberries, the feel of him underneath her, the burn of his kisses. She thinks of the man who stumbled into their bedroom last night, all jagged edges and open wounds, reaching for her, burrowing into her, trusting her.
There is a monster inside him. He's been cursed for centuries now, and with magic returned, she can only assume that the darkness will grow ever stronger.
But he's her husband. She chose him. She chooses him. She loves him.
And he sees her as just a distraction. A pretty plaything. A toy with which to pass the time.
How did she end up as his wife, anyway? He said himself that he wrote the curse, so she'd thought…
Did he choose her out as his bedwarmer? Or was she just a random selection, dumped at his side to give him someone to talk to as the years passed beneath the Evil Queen's reign?
(If he never wanted her, if he didn't choose her, if she's only a distraction…why would he choose her now?)
"Why are you like this?" she asks.
He scoffs at her, all scorn and derision and mocking amusement. "Like what, dearie? The Dark One? Cleverer women than you have tried to find the answer to that."
"Don't call me that," she whispers, and whirls for the door.
"Belle—" she thinks she hears him call, but it's too late. She's faster than him, even in her heels, and the bell rings behind glass as she slams the door between them.
Her anger simmers, low and fizzing and unpredictable. He may not have stabbed her in the back like the last monster she tried to help did, but somehow, this (hearing him dismiss her as worthless) hurts even worse. She's done nothing but reach out for him, has held him, has kissed him, has offered him her entire future, has believed the best of him, and what does he do in return?
Laughs at her. Dismisses her. Throws her away as if she means nothing.
Well, this was always a fool's chance, wasn't it? She should have known it wouldn't turn out.
Of course…she's never given up on something so quickly before.
No one can ever, ever love me! Her husband's tortured outburst rings in her ears (Isabel's ears), and Belle's steps slow.
It's been less than seventy-two hours since the curse broke. Less than three days since she's been Belle as well as Isabel. Less than three days…and in that time, Rumplestiltskin has lost his son all over again (and gained a wife he never has seemed to know what to do with).
"He's mourning," she whispers aloud, and there is a hole opening up in her heart.
He's mourning, grieving for the son stolen from him all over again by this strange barrier around town, and…
"And he doesn't believe I can love him," she reminds herself.
All he's asked of her, she suddenly remembers, is that she not hate him.
(Because he hates himself enough for the both of them.)
Belle stops in the middle of the sidewalk and lets her anger die away. In its place, she feels only determination.
He let her go (didn't stop her, didn't try to control her, didn't emotionally blackmail her into changing her mind). He expected her to go (and Belle has always been more than just the sum of people's expectations). He still thinks she is motivated purely by a desire to be a hero and save the town from him (but why be the town's hero when she can be his instead?).
Turning on her heel, Belle starts back to the pawnshop.
She doesn't make it even two steps.
"Belle." Her father steps into her path. Though she stiffens (warding herself against the cold expression she expects him to be wearing), he only stands there, so sad and desperate. "Belle, I'm sorry I shut you out yesterday. I shouldn't have sent you away."
"Father?" Belle narrows her eyes, her mind slow to wrench itself free of the image of Rumplestiltskin standing so lonely and broken in his shop even as her body instinctively tilts toward the father she's missed for so long. "You…you don't hate me?"
"Of course not!" And he bends, scooping her up into his embrace. For just that moment, enveloped in the smell of carnations and roses and rich soil, Belle tries to feel the same security in his arms as she did when she was a child.
It's too different, but then, everything is in this world.
"Please," her father begs, "give me another chance. Let's go talk, okay? We…we were both cursed, but before that…how long was it since we'd seen each other?"
Her smile is watery. "Too long."
"Yes. Too long. You're a completely different person now."
The validation feels so good that Belle follows him without a second thought. But even looking back on it later (even if she'd known what was to come), she thinks she would have done the same thing. Everyone deserves a second chance (but only one, the colder, scarred part of herself will whisper).
As soon as they enter the flowershop, as soon as her father pulls the door closed (and locked) behind them, the mood changes. The soft entreaty in Maurice's face transforms into a cold stolidness.
"Belle," he says. "This is for your own good. I have to save you from him. I don't know why he wants you, why he's cursed you, but I can't let him have you."
"What?" Belle holds up her arms between them as he moves toward her. "What are you talking about?"
"You're not supposed to be like this. It was a mistake, and I found the only person who can fix it."
"Hello, Belle." A slender, dark shape emerges from the backroom, a wide smile on her full lips, her eyes black as night.
Ice slips down Belle's spine, freezing her in place. She stares, her heart in her throat, her side aching with remembered pain.
"No," she whispers. "You…you're locked up."
Regina's smile widens. "But surely you remember how I got out the last time they tried to keep me caged, my dear."
"They…" Belle wants to squeeze her eyes shut, but she dares not let the Evil Queen out of her sight for even a second. "They let you go."
"Well." Regina smirks. "Some things never change."
"Just help her!" Maurice demands, and only then does Belle remember that he's there (a traitor; another knife in her back; another ally who is anything but).
"Excuse me?" Regina arches a brow at him. "The deal was that I help you with your little problem in exchange for a book. I don't see that book in my hands, do you?"
Maurice scowls. "I'll get it, don't worry. You say it's in his shop?"
"Yes. A spellbook, bound and locked. Bring it to me, and your daughter will have a whole new set of memories to keep her on the straight and narrow."
"What?!" Belle cries. She is beyond fear now, moved straight to panic. "Father, you can't do this!"
"Of course he can't," Regina says. "But I can. It's quite easy, actually, to tweak curse memories, rewrite them, change your perception of yourself. Really, dear, I'd think you'd be thanking me. Being married to the Dark One was a fate far worse than I meant you to bear. After all, you were my only friend during my…brief…captivity."
"Do you stab all your friends in the back and leave them to die drowning in their own blood?" Belle spits.
And that is the moment her father chooses to slip from the shop, headed out to steal from her husband (Belle once more, just as when he was cursed, doomed to be his collateral damage). He's always been a firm believer in hearing only what he wants to hear, so Belle can't even be too surprised that he chooses to flee from the realization that he is trusting her, not to the husband who's cared for her and looked after her and fought on her behalf, but in the hands of a woman who's already betrayed and hurt and proven how little she cares for Belle.
"That was a misunderstanding," Regina says. "How was I to know Snow and her Prince Charming were about to let me go of their own free will?"
"You said we were friends," Belle whispers. She despises herself for it (for the hurt that is still there, aching like a bruise so slow to heal). "I kept you company. I brought you meals. I did everything I could to make you comfortable. I spoke in your defense! And I'm the one you stabbed."
"I did try to make it up to you, dear." Regina looks away. "There's nowhere safer than by the side of the Dark One—supposing he sees you as his, anyway. You had a good life under the curse, didn't you? Wanted for nothing? You even got to be happy. That was my gift to you."
"No." Belle shakes her head, angry and defeated and hurting (and wishing Rumplestiltskin would come for her, knowing he won't, realizing that she has had a part in condemning herself to this fate just as much as she did the last time). "I think you were afraid. I saw you at your weakest. At your loneliest. I saw you at your darkest, when you left me for dead and then tried to murder your own stepdaughter. And you hate me for that—for being there for you."
"You saw only what I wanted you to see," the Queen says, all haughty disdain and desperate bravado.
"I think you cursed me to become Mrs. Gold because you thought I would be too cowed to make any trouble. I think you gambled on Rumplestiltskin hating me and then killing me the moment I got in his way. I think the only way you know how to show mercy is by couching it in ruthlessness."
"You don't know me," Regina says. "So you kept me company while I languished in a cell plotting my revenge. That doesn't make you anything more than a naïve, gullible fool all too willing to believe the best in everyone. You even think you can see something good in that little imp, don't you?"
Belle clamps her mouth closed, her jaw locked (her heart arrested mid-beat), to keep Rumplestiltskin's secrets from spilling out.
"He doesn't care about you," Regina says. She's too close, leaning in so that Belle has to turn her face to keep from letting Regina see any truths in her eyes. "He's quite good at making you think he does, but only for as long as you're useful. The minute he doesn't need you anymore, he'll throw you away like garbage."
"You might need your mirror back, Your Majesty," Belle says defiantly. "It sounds like you're talking about yourself now."
Regina's eyes narrow, so dark they seem to be spitting black flame. "I think I'll make you a maid," she says, her tone so suddenly conversational that Belle is left gaping and confused. "A janitor, always cleaning up someone else's mess. A timid, meek little mouse of a girl dreaming of heroics she can never achieve. What do you want your name to be this time?"
Bile burns in the back of her throat. "Don't," she says. "Don't do this."
"How about…Margie? Verna? I'll think of something. Who knows? Rumplestiltskin might even thank me for it."
When Belle turns to run, Regina's there instantly, her hands like claws around Belle's arms. Remembered terror has Belle flinching before she remembers that she is strong now (she has Isabel inside her as well as Belle; Rumplestiltskin himself has looked at her as if she is the best thing he's ever seen) and she lashes out with her fists.
Regina waves her hand and smoke binds Belle's arms to her side. "Nice try," she says. "But I have magic enough for that."
"He'll destroy you for this," Belle warns her (thinks of the scars layered over her father's body for an accidental tackling). "He doesn't have to love me to protect what is his."
"But, my dear," Regina says with a cold smile. "When I'm through with you, you won't be his anymore. You won't be anyone's." She cocks her head and arches an eyebrow. "Kind of like him, really, if you think about it."
"And your son?" Belle can't help but ask (thinks of Rumplestiltskin's body shaking with sobs in her lap as he keened his boy's name half the night). "What will he think of this?"
Regina's face firms into an impenetrable mask. "He'll never know. You certainly won't remember to tell him." She steps closer to where Belle is held immobile. "Now, where was I? Should I allow you a lover of your own? Maybe that sheriff of Nottingham, hm? He's always seemed in want of a companion."
Refusing to show her terror, Belle turns her face away, closes her eyes, and wishes for Rumplestiltskin with every beat of her heart.
(But he won't come. She called him a monster and walked away and he's never believed she loved him anyway.
He won't come. She was a distraction, and he cannot afford one anymore.
He'll never come, because she doesn't deserve to be saved by him.)
It hurts. He tells himself it doesn't, that it shouldn't (that he knew it was coming so he has only himself to blame), but it hurts anyway.
Two days. Rumplestiltskin stands in the doorway of their—his—empty house and forces himself not to count the hours that Belle chose to be his.
Two days, more kisses than he deserved, several embraces, her warm arms and soft comfort to hold him together when this further loss of Bae destroyed him all over again. It's more than she should have given him. More than he deserves. He'll be grateful for that (in the morning, when he's tucked the hurt away deep inside). He cannot choose her, not when she doesn't choose him anymore in return, but he can at least choose to focus on his gratitude rather than his hurt.
Slowly, Rumplestiltskin drags himself into the kitchen. Their breakfast dishes are drying on the counter, the chipped cup back where it belongs (Belle smiled, this morning, when he produced it just in time to be washed), and if he were to look in the fridge, he would see the cut lemons for her tea, the jam she bought just for his toast, the orange juice she likes on lazy weekends.
Rumplestiltskin waits for the anger to hit. He expects that, any moment, he will be struck by the urge to lash out and rage and destroy everything that reminds him of her.
But it doesn't come. Instead, he feels only the overwhelming hurt that began growing from the moment Belle looked at him (with Isabel's eyes) and asked him why he couldn't change.
"I'm a coward," he whispers to her (now that she's not here; now that she'll never be here again). "Cowards can't change who they are."
And neither can monsters.
She promised! something inside him screams. She promised she wouldn't hate me.
But that was a promise he never should have asked of her. He'd known it was impossible from the beginning.
Instead of risking the hurt growing even more overwhelming, Rumplestiltskin turns for his study rather than the library. A whim (one birthed centuries ago with a spinner who learned, over and over again, how easily his weak spots are taken advantage of) has him calling Dove.
"Is she staying at her store or the cabin?" he asks.
Dove is silent even longer than normal. "I thought she was with you," he finally replies. "She hasn't been back to her shop since she brought you lunch."
The hurt deepens. Apparently, he drove her not only from his side, but also from the haven she created so painstakingly for herself (he never should have tried to give her a gift, or courted her, or dared to think he could keep her longer than a brief, cursed moment).
"She must be at the cabin," he says. "Check that she doesn't need anything, will you?"
"Her car's at her store," Dove says before Rumplestiltskin can hang up.
And for the first time, a shiver of foreboding works its way down Rumplestiltskin's spine.
"Dove," he says in the coldest voice he can manage. "Is Regina still locked up?"
"No. She escaped her cell sometime this morning. Magic, they're saying."
"Find Belle," Gold commands, and he drops the phone.
He'll kill her. This is what comes of being merciful, of letting his enemies (even the ones he made himself) live, of not giving the darkness free reign. Without the darkness, he is a coward, and without magic, he is powerless, and without his curse, he is nothing but dust waiting to be swept away with the trash. He will not kneel again, certainly not to an Evil Queen with more anger than talent. This time, she will die.
Rumplestiltskin's not entirely certain how he makes it to the police station, but the sight of David Nolan rather than Emma Swan there barely phases him.
"You let her escape?" he bites out.
"Gold!" David frowns at him, his arms crossed, his muscles tensed. Rumplestiltskin cares nothing for the display of wariness.
"Regina," he snarls. "Where is she?"
The hesitation is slight enough Rumplestiltskin merely tenses.
"We don't know. After we managed to convince the whole town not to flee in a panic, Emma was exhausted. She tried to talk to Regina, to get through to her about Henry. But it was too much. Mary Margaret and I took her home to get her to rest, but when I came back—"
"I don't care," Rumplestiltskin bites out. "Where is Regina now?"
"You don't know?" David raises an eyebrow at him. There's a new frost to his voice (for all Rumplestiltskin has helped him and his True Love, his interactions with this couple have always revealed a marked lack of gratitude). "Isn't she your student?"
"Not for ages," he sneers. "You were supposed to keep her locked up. It's the one thing you were good for."
The prince narrows his eyes. "Emma said you two made a deal—something about not messing with each other? Seems like you're already breaking it."
"Or Sheriff Swan broke it first." Rumplestiltskin plants his cane and makes himself seem impassive (revealing weakness does nothing but grind a man down in the dirt). "By letting Regina go, you've dumped a whole load of trouble on my doorstep."
David looks unsympathetic. "You're the one who brought magic here. Guess you'll have to deal with the consequences."
For an instant (for too long), the darkness has Rumplestiltskin snarling and raging and only a breath away from strangling this man (this man who's been reunited with his child, who has his whole family, who is safe and loved and secure in his heroism and his goodness and his future) to death.
But he's been playing the long game too many centuries just to lose it all now.
And David (shepherd and orphan and fake prince) has always been more susceptible to a glimpse of humanity than to threats.
"It's Belle," he grits out.
And just like that, the prince's belligerence is subsumed beneath concern.
"She's missing. And Regina…I think she only cursed her to be with me so that I'd have a weakness she could exploit."
It's too much. Far too much.
(But it's enough, too, because Prince Charming sets aside the gun and whatever resentment he feels in exchange for sympathy and altruism.)
"You care for her," David realizes, as if this is a revelation. As if he's never seen the Dark One as anything but the monster in the shadows, for all he's made him bleed and locked him in the dark and heard his mad gibbering.
Rumplestiltskin leashes his fury (his terror) and says only, "Are you going to help her or not?"
In short order, they're retracing Belle's steps, from her store to the pawnshop (now with the front door bashed open and a trail of glass leading back toward the cabinet where Rumplestiltskin kept a spellbook signed with Cora's name) and then back out again, this time with the werewolf waitress and her canine nose leading the way. A surge of fury nearly blinds Rumplestiltskin when she loses the scent just in front of the flowershop.
"I should have known," he hisses.
David's hand clutches at his shoulder (only iron self-control keeps Rumplestiltskin from using his cane to drive him back) as he hurriedly says, "Just talk to him first! Right? We're not going in there to hurt anyone—"
Rumplestiltskin tears himself free and stalks into the store. Unlike the last time he visited, however, this time, the florist has chosen to stand tall and seemingly bold between Rumplestiltskin and whatever (whoever?) he thinks he's protecting.
"We just want to talk!" David exclaims from behind Rumplestiltskin.
"There's nothing to talk about," the ridiculous excuse for a father says, choosing to acknowledge only the prince. "I had to protect my daughter. I'm not sorry for it. You'd have done the same for yours if she was cursed to share a bed with a monster like him."
"What do you mean?" David asks, but Rumplestiltskin's patience has run out.
Lunging forward, he slams the man back against a wall of planters, his cane pressed so tightly to Maurice's throat that the veins in his forehead pop and wriggle. "Where is she?" he demands. "What have you done with her?"
"I've protected her!" Maurice spits back. There's fear in his eyes, but it is smashed low and deep beneath self-righteous anger and…ah, yes, there it is. Rumplestiltskin recognizes it for what it is: wounded pride. He would rather destroy everything that makes Belle Belle than believe that his daughter could make a decision he doesn't approve of.
"You've taken her choice away from her," Rumplestiltskin says. "Even I never stooped so low."
"Didn't you?" Combined, David and Maurice manage to tear Rumplestiltskin away before he can kill the monster masquerading as a father (as so many fathers really are). There is unabashed triumph on the taller man's face. "You forced her to play your little wife, but that's all over and done with. Now, she won't even remember you."
"Regina," Rumplestiltskin realizes. Lightning spears through his veins. She has magic…she has the spellbook she sent Maurice after…and she cast the Dark Curse. "She's going to rewrite her memories?"
"She'll be free of you!"
There's more the man has to say. Rumplestiltskin doesn't care. Before Prince Charming can even take a step, three solid strikes of his cane slams Maurice, sobbing and bloody, to the floor.
"Gold!" David shouts, pushing him back, his arm a solid band against Rumplestiltskin's chest (if terror and rage weren't vying for control of Rumplestiltskin just then, he'd have spared a bit of respect for the prince's glaring lack of survival instincts). "Stop! This isn't helping her!"
Rumplestiltskin nearly growls as he lets sense stop him from poofing behind the prince and finishing what he started. "Make sure he never comes near Belle again," he commands David. "If he does…"
"Yeah." Looking over his shoulder, David sighs heavily—but doesn't let his hand fall from Rumplestiltskin's chest (as if he senses, somehow, just how close Rumplestiltskin is to falling apart without something to anchor him). "I get the picture. But think, okay? Where would Regina take Belle?"
"Her bookstore," he says. "She'll need something that belongs to Belle."
"Not the house?" Ruby asks from near the door where she's keeping a wide distance between herself and Rumplestiltskin. Her eyes are wide, her skin pale, and if there weren't already tales of Mr. Gold's true identity (whispers of his dark acts and monstrous urges), then this will see them spreading all through town like wildfire.
"Her store," Rumplestiltskin repeats. "Belle's memories of it predate our marriage."
(Regina will need an item from before, before him, when Isabel was safe and comfortable and unmarred by anger or fear or hatred of him.)
A haze is obscuring his vision. Rumplestiltskin tears himself free of David and makes for the door, desperate to escape the cloying scents of the flowershop (frantic to get space between him and Maurice), heedless of the time David takes to leave Ruby guarding Maurice until they can deal with him (kidnapping his own child, erasing her free will, turning her against Rumplestiltskin—just as Malcolm tried to do with Bae, a piper luring away his beloved son).
The fresh air doesn't help. Rumplestiltskin still can't breathe. He can't see. The haze only grows, turning everything blurry so that the world wavers all around him. Without his cane, he'd stagger and fall. With it, he only just barely stays upright.
"Gold. Gold? Gold!"
"We have to save her," he tries to say. "She shouldn't…she doesn't deserve to be punished because of me."
There is silence for so long that Rumplestiltskin almost thinks the prince has abandoned him. And then, suddenly, there is a touch at his chest (David tugging his pocket square free) and then something silky in his hand (David presses it between his fingers), and only then does Rumplestiltskin realize that the haze in his eyes is made up of tears he can't blink away. Turning his back on the prince's too-pitying gaze, he presses the handkerchief to his eyes until the moisture is all gone.
(The shepherd-turned-king lost his wife too, but has consistently found her again and again; the prince-turned-victim let go of his child too, but he did it to save a world and is counted a hero rather than a villain; and in this man who's offering him help rather than censure, Rumplestiltskin sees both everything he might have been…and everything he cannot help but fail to become.)
"She doesn't deserve this," David says, very quietly, and before Rumplestiltskin can more than tense, he adds, "Belle always seems to end up paying for other people's decisions, though. It's not fair."
"What do you mean?"
"Belle was once in our service," David says. "Snow's and mine. But…it didn't turn out well for her. You should ask her about it."
"She won't remember," Rumplestiltskin says, and has to look away, has to fiddle with the handkerchief again, until his vision has once more cleared. (Even if she remembers, she won't want to confide anything in him; he's the reason she's in danger at all.)
"She will," David says. "Because we're going to save her. Right?"
Grim determination banishes the last of his tears as Rumplestiltskin looks into David's eyes (and sees nothing of pity or condemnation, only respect and purpose).
"Right," Rumplestiltskin says.
And with a wave of his hand, he and the prince (and Dove, in the back; never pays to have an ace in the hole) are suddenly standing in Belle's bookstore. Dusk is falling and only the emergency lights along the corners of the ceiling illuminate the area, just enough for Rumplestiltskin to note the ashen pallor to his own hands. Magic is different here, and the simple transportation spell costs so much more than it did in their old world. No matter. Regina doesn't have enough magic yet to whisk herself and her prisoner around in a similar manner, so Rumplestiltskin and David are in the perfect position to see Regina's car pull up outside.
Sparks tingle through Rumplestiltskin's fingers as he rubs them against each other, his magic clamoring to be released even in its muted state, the darkness providing a hundred different ways for him to kill the witch—particularly when Regina opens the passenger door and reaches in to haul Belle from the front seat.
"Gold—" David starts, and then he lets out a curse as Rumplestiltskin strides outside to plant himself just in front of Regina.
"Hello, dearie," he says, and feels the darkness purr in delight at the sheer terror that floods through Regina's face.
"Rumple," she says, "this isn't what it looks like."
"Really? Because it looks like you're breaking our deal."
"I had to get her away from her father, didn't I?" Regina lets go of Belle and waves a hand at her, as if presenting her to Rumplestiltskin (he doesn't dare look at her and see all the anger and the hatred and the resentment she must feel for him now).
"Oh," Rumplestiltskin arches a brow, "that and the spellbook, of course."
"What can I say?" Regina swallows. "You taught me the art of good deal-making."
"And you've always been a poor student." Rumplestiltskin jerks his hand up, his magic reaching out in invisible tendrils to lift Regina in the air by her throat. It costs him in the fire that flares to volcanic life in his ankle, but he ignores that. "You really thought you could get away with this? What? You thought I'd do whatever you wanted to get her back after you messed around with her memories?"
"It was worth a shot," Regina chokes out, defiant to the end. Purple lightning crackles in her veins, but cutting off her airflow seems sufficient to prevent her from figuring out how to release it.
If David's ordering him to let go, Rumplestiltskin can't hear him. If the prince is hanging onto his arms, trying to drag him away, Rumplestiltskin can't feel him.
But what he does feel—what stops him mid-breath—is Belle's hand, laid just so over his atop the handle of his cane.
"Rumple," she says. Soft. Slow. Light as the touch of a seer's gaze. "It's okay," she says. "I'm all right. I'm still me. You can let her go now."
The instant Rumplestiltskin flicks his fingers and Regina vanishes (he pays for this with the ravenous hole in his stomach he knows from experience will not abate for a few days no matter how much food he devours), Belle releases her hold of him and steps back. Too late, he dares to look at her, and finds her eyes falling away, her face downturned.
That hurt inside him roars back to the forefront of his thoughts, of his dark, misshapen soul (so much more damaging than any price magic could demand of him).
"Where did you send her?" David asks.
"Her cell." Rumplestiltskin makes the suggestion of a shrug and waves away the fallen spellbook as well. "I dampened her magic, but it won't stick long. If you really want her to stay out of trouble, I'd suggest reminding her that there's a little boy's love on the line."
"You want me to use Henry against her?" the prince asks, so horrified that Rumplestiltskin only narrowly refrains from rolling his eyes.
"No one becomes a better person without something inspiring that change," he says (and feels the hurt twisting inside him even as he pointedly avoids looking in Belle's direction).
David nods, even if reluctantly, then turns to look at Belle (as if it's easy; as if anyone can do it; as if the mere sight of her doesn't burn). "Are you okay, Belle?" he asks.
"I've been worse," she says. There's something in her voice, some new thread of tension, that Rumplestiltskin's never heard from her before (but then, he doesn't know her, does he, not really, not like he fooled himself into thinking he knew Isabel). "Thank you, though, for coming after me."
"Do you…" David hesitates. The prince has never been the subtlest creature, but Rumplestiltskin can tell he's trying for tact when he asks, clumsily, "Are you…okay…here? Should I take you somewhere?"
Belle tenses. Even from three feet away, Rumplestiltskin can feel it (his magic surges forward, ready to rain down fire and destruction on whatever is scaring her). "No!" she says, too quickly. "I don't want…" Her breath shudders audibly. "Is my father…? He's the one who—"
"He won't hurt you again," Rumplestiltskin says darkly (and only too late remembers that the reason she left him, the reason she called him a monster, is because he hurt her father in payment for the last time he attacked her; this will only make her angrier at him—or worse, more scared of him).
"He…"
"We're locking him up on kidnapping charges," David says. "Gold got him to confess what he was planning."
That's a remarkably kind way of phrasing it, and Rumplestiltskin begrudgingly realizes that he owes the prince a favor now (more than one, really, since Belle's memories are her own still).
"You're safe now," Rumplestiltskin says. He's been a coward too long not to know when he's wallowing in it, so he clenches his jaw and makes himself look at Belle.
All he sees is a blur, some sound escaping her lips he can't recognize (it can't be a sob, he doesn't want her to be so hurt), as she flings herself at him. Rumplestiltskin barely has time to brace himself before she's hanging off of him, her breaths hot against his throat, her arms wound tightly around his shoulders.
"Thank you," she whispers. "Thank you."
Slowly (afraid he will wake from his delusion at any moment), Rumplestiltskin alights his left hand on her spine. A tremor shakes through her and she worms her way deeper into his embrace. She's shaking all over, and with a thought, Rumplestiltskin has the overcoat he left in his shop in hand and is draping it over her. She lets out that same sound again and presses her nose just under his jaw. All his restraint vanishes, then, and Rumplestiltskin lets himself fold in around her.
He never thought he'd feel her again. Not like this. So close. So warm. So trusting.
Through her curls, he sees David giving him a short nod, and though he returns it as best he can (gratitude burning in his eyes), his attention is wholly consumed by the woman in his arms.
Belle. Isabel. Both. Either. He doesn't care so long as she is whole and safe and alive (and not afraid of him).
"Belle," he whispers.
That sound again (it is a sob, and Maurice will never be able to pay enough in pain or in blood to atone for this travesty) as she buries her face against his neck. He's not sure how she's able to breathe like this, but he can feel her breaths anyway, stuttering against the tendons of his throat, ghosting along the shell of his ear, sinking deep, deep inside him until he vows not to move unless she does.
"Belle," he breathes again, and he mustn't hurt her (not again), but his arms shut around her, squeezing so tightly that he cannot help but believe she's really here. Here, in his arms, clinging to him, whispering his name in a way no one ever has before.
"Rumple," she cries. "Rumple, you came. You came. You saved me."
"Belle." Her name is all that is left to him, but she presses impossibly closer, and somehow, she is giving him more of herself.
That hurt inside him softens and shrinks and goes dormant.
"Please," she whispers (and he will do anything, he will burn whole worlds, create new realms, hand over his dagger, if only she will keep holding onto him, keep whispering his name, keep loving him). "Please, Rumple, take me home."
Home.
Their home.
His magic envelops them in smoke and with a thought (and a potion he poured twelve years of his life into, gone now, swallowed up as payment), he deposits them in the library where they've taken tea and shared stories and laughed over books together.
"Belle," he whispers again (his arms ready to release her), but she doesn't step away. She doesn't push him back.
Instead, she holds on tighter, and Rumplestiltskin will not (he vows) be the first to let go (not again, not with her, not after Bae).
Her tears brand through his skin, his heart lurches against his chest in an effort to reach hers, and no matter what she chooses after this, Rumplestiltskin savors this moment for all he's worth.
She's safe. She's safe, and she's not afraid of him, and for the first time in his life, he protected what he loves.